


For Your Reference

by Zeplerfer



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Dorky humor, Librarian Arthur, M/M, Pick-Up Lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23376946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeplerfer/pseuds/Zeplerfer
Summary: Someone has been leaving flirtatious notes in the library suggestion box...
Relationships: America/England (Hetalia)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 152





	For Your Reference

The morning shift is Arthur’s favorite time to put in his work-study hours at the campus library. Most students are too lazy to get up early and those that do generally aren’t the sort to ask the reference librarians stupid questions. Arthur can peacefully do his own homework behind the oak reference desk and enjoy the library’s serene atmosphere.

This morning Arthur swipes his student card through the turnstile and crosses the lobby, the same as usual, expecting yet another quiet day. But instead of the usual hushed murmurs, several people talk excitedly near the reference desk. Arthur lifts up the table flap and walks behind the desk. In the backroom, three librarians titter over a piece of paper.

Emma smiles and waves him over. “I know! We can ask Arthur for an objective opinion,” she suggests to the two other young women.

“Opinion on what?” Arthur asks, craning his neck to read whatever has caused such a flutter. It’s fortunate for them that there aren’t any students nearby—otherwise it might have been the _students_ shushing _them_.

“Someone left a card in the suggestions box that says ‘ _The reference desk librarian is super cute_ ,’” Lily explains in a soft voice. She holds up the card for Arthur to read.

“They misspelled ‘reference,’” Arthur replies, wrinkling his nose at the poor spelling and the atrocious handwriting. It was either written by a very smart chicken or a very dumb human.

Michelle rolls her eyes and tosses one of her brown pigtails behind her shoulder. “Not the point, Arthur. We’re trying to figure out who it’s meant for.”

“Yep.” Emma nods. “So who do you think is super cute?”

The three young women all turn to look at Arthur, who immediately lifts his hands in surrender. This is how the Trojan War started and he isn’t making the same mistake. “Women’s attractiveness really isn’t my forte,” he demurs.

“Come on!” Michelle says, nudging him with her elbow. She gestures toward Lily, who’s wearing a white blouse and pink skirt. “I think it’s Lily for sure.”

Lily ducks her head in embarrassment, the pink in her cheeks matching her skirt. “No, no,” she says softly. “It’s definitely Emma. Her cat sweaters are adorable.”

“Somehow I don’t think the _cats_ are what guys pay attention to when they’re looking at my sweaters,” Emma replies, lips quirking upward in a sly grin. “My vote’s on Shelly. She had on that really adorable blue dress yesterday. And pigtails are always cute.”

“Ooh, good point,” Lily agrees.

Michelle smiles happily. “It _is_ a nice dress, but I think I’d rather be called beautiful.”

“Well, I think you’re all lovely,” Arthur replies, earning a spontaneous hug from Lily. He’s glad her overprotective older brother isn’t around to see it. Having reached a consensus that _all_ of the reference librarians are very cute, they split off to shelve books as each takes a turn staffing the reference desk.

Arthur handles the final shift at the reference desk just before lunch. It’s a fairly dull job. Most students rely on online research instead of the library, which gives Arthur a surprising amount of free time at work. He makes it halfway through his poetry assignment when he hears the lunch-time rush of students taking a shortcut from their classes to the nearest dining hall. He sets his assignment aside. Based on long experience, Arthur knows there’s no point trying to read while the students are passing through and no point trying to hush them either.

One student breaks away from the pack and gives Arthur a flustered smile as he approaches the desk. Oh, dear. That’s usually a sign it’s going to be a stupid question. Arthur braces himself for the worst.

“Hi,” the student says, smiling through teeth that are as neat as a white picket fence. He’s tall and blond—but, judging by the pimples on his chin and the slightly pudgy cheeks, probably just a freshman. He’ll be quite a looker once he grows out of the rest of his baby fat, Arthur thinks to himself, before mentally reminding himself that he’s at work and needs to be professional.

“May I help you?” Arthur asks primly. With any luck, the student just wants to know where the library bathroom is and then Arthur can return to his poetry.

The student takes a deep breath and gazes down at Arthur. A set of wire-rim glasses partially obscure his blue eyes. “So, uh, there’s something I want to check out.” He pauses.

Arthur arches an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Crap. This isn’t working,” the student replies, his cheeks flushing an interesting shade of red. “You’re supposed to ask me what I’m checking out.”

“No, you’re supposed to tell me,” Arthur replies logically.

“Uh, right, of course.” The student laughs nervously and looks like he’s rethinking his question. “I’m looking for a…” he glances around. “A textbook?”

Arthur wonders what else one might check out in the campus library, but decides it will be better to focus on helping the student as quickly as possible so he can get back to his homework. “Alright, what’s the title?”

“Um…” The student stares at him blankly.

“How about the author?”

The student blinks. “Er…”

“Do you know _anything_ about this book?” Arthur demands.

“It’s got a blue cover,” the student volunteers.

“Right, well it sure is convenient that we have our textbooks sorted by color,” Arthur deadpans. “I’ll just look up the blue ones, shall I?”

The freshman looks surprised. “You can _do_ that?”

“No, of course not.”

“Oh.” The student smiles bashfully. “So… I think the book I want is right there,” he says, pointing to a blue textbook at the top of the to-be-shelved bookshelf.

Arthur stands up from his stool and walks over to the shelf. He frowns in irritation, hating the height of the top shelf. He isn’t _short_ , but he still has to stretch to reach the heavy, blue textbook. His shirt hikes up as he stands on his tippy-toes and he just barely manages to grasp the book’s spine. With an _ooof_ , he pulls the heavy textbook off the shelf and turns around.

For some reason, the student’s cheeks seem even redder as he watches Arthur carry the book back to the desk. Arthur glances down at the title. “The Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses?” he asks, surprised to see a word that even he doesn’t recognize.

“Uh, sure,” the student agrees, handing over his student card to check out the book.

Arthur glances down at the smiling photo on the card. As he guessed, the student is a freshman. Arthur scans the card’s barcode first and then the book’s barcode. “Here you go, Alfred,” he says, handing the heavy textbook to the freshman.

The freshman gapes at him. “How did you…?”

“It’s on your student card.”

“Right! Of course.” Alfred grins in embarrassment.

“Is there anything _else_ I can help you with?” Arthur asks.

“I… um… you could tell me _your_ name?”

Arthur blinks in surprise. Nobody has ever asked him that before. “It’s Arthur,” he replies, seeing no harm in answering such an easy question. “Anything else?”

“Uh… no. Thanks, Arthur!” Alfred grips the book tightly and walks away with a smile, looking absurdly happy despite the heavy textbook in his arms.

* * *

When Arthur arrives the next morning, he finds his three co-workers giggling over a new suggestion card. “ _The reference desk librarian has a super cute butt_ ,” it reads.

“I hope you’re not expecting my opinion on _this_ one,” Arthur says. He admires a shapely pair of buttocks, just typically not those on women.

Lily blushes while Emma laughs. Michelle just shakes her head. “I’m not even sure how someone would see our butts when we spend all our time sitting at the stool or stocking books in the back,” she says.

“We should try to figure out who’s leaving the messages!” Emma proposes.

Michelle grins. “I think you mean watch to see who’s checking out our derrières.”

Lily’s blush darkens as she buries herself in the collection of books that needed to be reshelved. Deciding that helping with the reshelving is better than continuing the butt discussion, Arthur joins her. As usual, he checks each book for damage and makes sure that no bookmark has been left behind before scanning the barcode back into the system and adding the book to the restocking shelf. It’s worth it to check—some students leave a variety of interesting papers in their textbooks, including the occasional paper money.

Arthur shelves books for the next few hours and takes his usual spot at the front desk just as the lunchtime crowd arrives. He answers a question about the library bathroom (aisle to the right, down the stairs) and then another about deadlines for DVDs (two weeks, one extension allowed). As Arthur finishes helping someone check out a book, he spots a young blond man smiling and waving at him. It’s Alfred. Deciding to humor the friendly freshman, Arthur waves back.

Alfred walks over to the reference desk and smiles nervously.

“So, still interested in diseases that can be transmitted to humans from animals?” Arthur asks. He looked up the word ‘zoonoses’ after checking out the blue textbook.

“Huh?” Alfred stares at him blankly.

“Ah. I take it you haven’t started reading your textbook yet.”

“Right.” Alfred laughs nervously. “Still need to get started on that.”

“Well, were you looking for any other books?” Arthur asks.

“No. I was looking up librarian jokes and I thought you might enjoy this one.” Alfred clears his throat while Arthur prepares to cringe. “I asked the librarian for a book about Pavlov’s dog and Schrödinger’s cat. She said it rang a bell but she wasn’t sure if it was there or not.”

Arthur snorts. “Not bad,” he admits.

“I’ll let you know if I find another!” Alfred promises as he waves and rejoins the crowd of students heading to lunch.

Arthur smiles and shakes his head. The freshman is strange and a little clueless, but in a nice way.

* * *

For the next week, no new notes arrive in the suggestion box. Arthur and the other reference librarians continue their normal routine of shelving books and answering questions about library resources. Without any additional clues, it seems the mystery of the flirtatious student with bad spelling and bad handwriting will never be solved.

Alfred visits Arthur at the reference desk just before lunch every few days, even though he rarely asks for any library materials.

Another week later, Arthur finds _The Definitive Book of Pick-up Lines_ in the book return pile. He wrinkles his nose. Who on Earth is foolish enough to think that pick-up lines will help them in the romance department? As usual, Arthur checks the book for damage and spots a few dog-eared pages near the middle. Grumbling to himself, he carefully flattens the pages. As he glances down, a few words in the text jump out at him. Oh god, it’s the section on _librarian_ pick-up lines. Drawn in by terrible curiosity, Arthur reads the first one.

_Guy: There’s something I want to check out._

_Girl: What?_

_Guy: You._

The next pick-up line is just as bad:

_Guy: Maybe you could help me out. I’m looking for a good romance._

_Girl: *swoons*_

Arthur groans at the terrible lines and shuts the book in annoyance. Anyone hitting on his coworkers with those awful pick-up lines would get slapped with a huge textbook. This book is not one to be set aside lightly, but rather hurled with great force.

He adds the book to the restocking shelf and moves on to the next in the pile. A few minutes later it occurs to Arthur that the pick-up book and the compliments in the suggestion box might be related. By the time he goes back to the shelf to grab the book and check its lending history, Michelle has already rolled away the shelf. He could look for the book himself to scan it into the system and find the check-out history, but that is more work than he wants to do just to find out who has been ogling his coworkers. Not to mention, it would be hard to explain why he looked up unnecessary information if his supervisor does another audit. The library works hard to maintain the privacy of student library records.

Arthur finishes shelving the books and takes his turn at the reference desk as the lunch hour approaches. He starts working on his statistics homework because even English majors are required to take at least one math class before they graduate. Arthur attempts another calculation about probabilities and is so busy glaring at his notebook in frustration that he doesn’t notice a student approaching the desk.

“Ooh, are you studying math?” Alfred asks excitedly. He leans over the desk to get a better look at the calculations neatly written on Arthur’s notepad.

Arthur jerks his head upward in surprise. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have gotten distracted,” he apologizes as he starts to close his notebook. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Nah. I was just curious what you were working on.”

“Statistics, I’m afraid,” Arthur says with a heart-felt sigh.

“Maybe I can help?”

Arthur shakes his head. “I’m supposed to be here to answer _your_ questions,” he demurs.

“Come on, there’s never anyone at your desk right now anyway.”

“Well…” Arthur glances around to see if his supervisor or any of the other librarians are around. There’s no one. And he could use the help. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.” He pulls out the notebook and flips it around to show the problem to Alfred.

Alfred reads it over quickly and nods to himself. “Yeah, you’re calculating this as a combination when you should be using the formula for permutations. It’s easy to mix them up! Combination is when the order doesn’t matter.” He leans a little closer and starts scribbling a formula in the notebook. “This is the one you want to use. You know, I always remembered that a combination lock is the wrong name. It should really be a permutation lock!”

“Oh.” Arthur reads his notebook upside down and the first thing he notices is that Alfred has truly atrocious handwriting. It looks familiar, though it takes Arthur a moment to place it. Suddenly, Alfred’s strange behavior starts to make sense. Arthur just needs a way to test his theory. “Thank you for the math help. Could you help me with one other thing?” he asks as Alfred hands him back the notebook with the correct formula.

“Sure!”

“How do you spell reference?”

Alfred blinks in confusion. “What’s that got to do with statistics?”

“Nothing. Just humor me, please.”

“Dude, you’re the librarian.”

“It’s very important.”

“Well, in that case…” Alfred frowns. “R-E-F-F-E-R-E-N-C-E?”

“I see.” Arthur smirks triumphantly, pleased with his detective skills. “So you’re the one who left the flirtatious notes in the suggestion box.”

“Uh, yeah.” Alfred admits with a flush. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, this is wonderful news.”

“Really?” Alfred looks pleased. “I mean, I’m glad!”

“Yes. The other librarians are dying to figure out the intended recipient. It’ll be nice to finally be able to tell them.”

Alfred beams. “So… you wanna grab lunch?”

“Sure, but first you need to tell me which one it was.”

Alfred tilts his head to the side like a confused puppy. “Which what?”

“The other reference librarians are Emma, Michelle, and Lily.” At Alfred’s continued look of confusion, Arthur nods to himself thoughtfully. “I suppose you wouldn’t recognize them by name. Emma’s the one in the cat sweaters, Michelle is the brunette, and Lily is the shortest. So, who were you complimenting?” Arthur asks, a bit jealous of his lucky coworker.

“Oh…” Alfred shifts uncomfortably. “I thought you realized.”

“Well, I know you left the note, but I want to know who it was for.”

Alfred bites his lip. “The thing is… I only see one librarian behind the reference desk when I come in.”

Arthur nods. “Right. And I just need to know which one of them it is so I can tell her.”

“Yeah, I’m just gonna go crawl into a hole somewhere,” Alfred declares as he starts to walk away.

“Well that’s not very helpful,” Arthur mutters to himself. He doesn’t understand why Alfred would go to the effort of writing the note and then refuse to name the intended recipient. Didn’t he want his crush to know?

A minute later, Arthur realizes he’s a complete idiot. _He_ was the only librarian Alfred saw! The note was intended for _him_!

“Shit,” Arthur mutters under his breath. He looks up to see if he can spot Alfred’s retreating back, but Alfred is long gone. Arthur lets his forehead drop to the desk. He is a complete and utter dunce who just ruined a perfectly good opportunity to go on a date!

After a few minutes spent wallowing in misery, Arthur decides there’s only one thing left to do. When his shift ends, he goes to check out a book.

* * *

The next day, Arthur arrives to find the other reference librarians puzzling over a new card. “ _Sorry_ ,” is all it says in Alfred’s terrible chicken-scratch handwriting.

“I don’t get it,” Michelle declares. “What’s he sorry for?”

“Maybe he’s apologizing for objectifying us?” Lily suggests.

Emma snorts. “That doesn’t seem likely.” She turns to Arthur. “Any thoughts?”

“I figured out who left the note,” Arthur explains with a sigh.

“You did?” Michelle claps her hands excitedly. “So who was it for?”

“Well, he explained that I’m the only reference librarian he sees,” Arthur replies.

Michelle and Lily give him a blank stare, but Emma covers her mouth with her hand and laughs. “Of course! We forgot that _Arthur_ is a super cute reference librarian as well.”

“ _Ohhh_ …” Michelle and Lily nod in understanding.

“So what did you say to him?” Lily asks softly.

Arthur shakes his head. “I didn’t figure it out in time.”

“That’s okay. I’m sure he’ll come back to the library at some point!” Michelle says encouragingly. "You know, eventually. Maybe when it's time for finals?"

“If you see him, just rush out there. We’ll cover the desk,” Emma promises.

“Thank you.” Arthur nods at his coworkers, then heads over to the pile of books waiting to be restocked and starts checking them back in. As he pages through the books, looking for lost items and damaged pages, he thinks about Alfred’s visits to the reference desk. In hindsight, it’s obvious that Alfred has been flirting with him for weeks.

For the next few days, Arthur doesn’t even try to do homework when it’s his turn to sit behind the reference desk. He just waits and keeps an eye on the door, hoping against hope that Alfred will continue to use his lunch-time shortcut to the dining hall.

After a few days of disappointment, Arthur begins to lose hope. Then, near the end of his shift, he finally spots Alfred walking behind a group of eager high school students and their parents on a campus tour. The campus guide points out the many library amenities, pretending that the students will spend more time studying than partying. Their parents nod appreciatively. The students look bored. Arthur abandons his desk and hurries over. He makes it halfway there before Alfred even notices him approach.

Alfred raises his eyebrows and gives Arthur a sheepish grin. “Oh, hey.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to come back,” Arthur says, sounding more annoyed than he intends because his stomach suddenly clenches uncomfortably.

“Yeah?”

“Yes. You left in such a rush that I wasn’t able to say something.” Arthur glances down at his shoes and takes a deep breath. “I’m no mathematician, obviously, but I’m… oh, god, I can’t believe I’m actually saying this.” Arthur looks up into Alfred’s confused face and the awkward silence is so overwhelming that he barely manages to finish the stupid pick-up line. “I’m rather good with numbers, so you should give me yours and I’ll show you what I can do with it.”

Alfred laughs so loudly that the tour group turns to stare at them. “Did you look that up in the big book of pick-up lines?” he asks between peals of laughter.

“Yes, though I don’t know why we even have that book.”

“Gotta help us losers get dates somehow,” Alfred says with a happy smile. “Sure, I’ll give you my number. You still interested in lunch?”

Arthur breathes a sigh of relief. As his stomach unclenches, it growls with hunger. “Absolutely. Let me go clock out.” Arthur hurries back to the reference desk and sees Emma giving him a thumbs-up from the backroom.

“Don’t worry, I’ll cover the last few minutes,” she promises.

“Thank you!” Arthur replies with heart-felt gratitude. He grabs his backpack and hurries back to where Alfred is waiting for him. Butterflies flutter in Arthur’s stomach as the dorky freshman smiles and holds the door open for him as they step out into the warm sunshine.

“I can’t believe you looked up a mathematician pick-up line just for me,” Alfred says happily.

“Yes, well, it seemed like your sort of humor,” Arthur says, but without his usual bite. “There’s just one thing I have to get off my chest.”

“Yeah?”

“Reference is spelled with one f.”

Alfred laughs. “Don’t worry, I’ll spell check my texts!”

(He doesn’t.)

(Arthur agrees to date him anyway.)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a tumblr prompt that's so old I can't find it anymore. 
> 
> Stay safe, everyone!


End file.
